The philosophy of life, and philosophy of language, in a course of lectures

by Friedrich von Schlegel

Absolute doubt, therefore, alone constitutes scientific error. As such it must invariably be looked upon whenever, rising to the height of despair, it pronounces science to be unattainable. It is such unlimited extension that constitutes a fault or error. But even in this respect it is extremely difficult to determine for individuals, nations, and eras, this utmost limit, beyond which doubt becomes culpable. It is a shifting line of demarkation, according as the perplexity of infinite doubt, remaining nothing more than a passive state of internal conflict, is not raised into an abiding principle and unchangeable maxim of life. Besides, it is extremely difficult to determine, as a general law, how far doubt can and may go before hope is entirely lost. Nay, it is not easy to say whether, even in this pernicious extravagance, it may not transform itself into good, and bring about a salutary crisis of transition, and, being set free from its own exaggerations, discover the true road to the goal of truth, and to a thorough understanding of it. It is only when absolute doubt, in its full energy, is set up purposely and forever as the final conclusion of all thought and reflection, as the supreme science itself, being developed with cool, calm self-possession, and applied to all things without exception, that this spirit of absolute negation becomes totally erroneous. In this case, indeed, it is irredeemably bad; as the hostile antagonist of all that is good and precious, it overturns truth itself together with science.

And who, then, is the author of all evil in man himself, and in all his thoughts, knowledge, and volitions, as well as in all the rest of creation? It is the dark spirit of negation who so well knows how to veil himself in the false light of apparently brightest clearness. And since we have reached up to the height, or, rather, down to the depths, of this primary source of all error, it may perhaps be necessary to add a further remark or two on this prime author of untruth, with a view of guarding against the misconceptions that otherwise might arise only too naturally. In Holy Writ he is called the Spirit and the Prince of this world. In ancient times, this description has been greatly misunderstood. It was taken to mean that he is properly the demiurge and subordinate creator of this sensible world, in which there are so many traces of fearful dissension, profound corruption, and disorder. The intrinsic state of nature in its present condition appeared to many thinkers so inexpressibly miserable and so full of deadly evil, that they could not bring themselves to ascribe its origination to the true God. But even though nature be in fact ever so heavily laden with woes and intrinsically miserable—(and indeed it is spoken of in the Book of Truth as the creature “groaning and travailing in pain”)—though the world were even far more fearfully rent with disorder and corruption, and chained and fettered to a shape stranger to goodness and truth than seems at the first glance to be the case, still there would be no ground for adopting the oriental view of two principles. And indeed the wonder is how it could ever have found adherents; since this world, already sufficiently distracted, is thereby but involved in still deeper dissension, and actually rent into two distinct parts, so that it becomes no longer possible to think or conceive of such a thing as truth, or to hope for any veritable and satisfactory scheme of knowledge. This strange religious error, into which the primal world of Asia, with its deep and profound emotions, fell, is so remote and foreign to the more moderate, not to say colder, sentiments of the West, that it is extremely difficult to set it forth and understand it in all its actual awfulness. It would, therefore, be as idle as it would be inappropriate for me to enter further into this false, but ancient system of dualism. Still there is one remark which essentially belongs to our present subject, and is also closely connected with what has gone before. The first author of untruth, we have seen, can not for a moment be regarded as the true demiurge and creator of the world, as the oriental view would represent him. Nevertheless, inasmuch as evil, universally and individually, in great and in little, is a deceptive image and imitation of good, this spirit of everlasting negation has unquestionably a world of his own, which is his production, and in a certain degree called forth and created by him. And that is the null and seeing world of void naught, which, however, through a fatal delusion and belief in its reality, and through its opposition to the good as well as the true, has become a real naught, and must be considered as such. The actual world of the beneficent Creator was created out of nothing, since, besides Himself, all is nothing but a mirror of His perfection, a mere reflection of His infinite power and glory. But though it was made out of nothing, it was yet created for something, or, rather, for very much, even for an ever-advancing approximation to, and a finally complete identity with, its Maker. This good and noble something, as the supreme end of the true creation, is, however, opposed by the naught of the dark world of shadows, which has now become real, and, consequently, evil. Thus created, however, or at least shaped and produced out of something, it exists for nothing, even for that naught which constitutes the proper world, the field of action and vital atmosphere of the evil principle. In the case of an individual whose delusions have been carried to the height of passion, and whose soul is torn and distracted by a perfect despair of all truth, it is sometimes said that he has hell itself in his heart; such a mode of speaking (as is usually the case with such images and metaphors, which we use without associating with them any very clear or definite ideas), is perfectly and in sober earnestness quite true. In a metaphysical sense even, it is perfectly precise and correct.

If this absolute doubt, which is so often set up for the supreme principle of all thought and knowledge, were always to show and exhibit itself such as it really is, and in its inmost nature, and if what it ultimately leads to, and from what source it originally springs, were fully known, then would this skeptical view of things, with its wild exaggerations, which go beyond all the analogy of human nature, prove far less baneful than it does at present. In general it would less easily gain assent and make a far weaker impression. But inasmuch as this fatally pernicious and most absurd paradox does not stand out here so sharply and clearly as it does in the genuine idealistic theory, but is mostly veiled and hidden beneath the manifold beauties of an exquisite skill of exposition, which very often drops the rigor of scientific form, it consequently numbers far more adherents than could have been believed to be possible. Indeed, they are almost as numerous as the admirers of a poetical pantheism, with which it contrives occasionally to form a half compact and seemingly identifies itself. And this fact alone furnishes a sufficient reason why we should not pass it over altogether unnoticed in these Lectures. However, it must be borne in mind that all our objections and exceptions are directed exclusively against an absolute skepticism, as exercising by its perverted application and undue extension, a fatally destructive influence on science and on life.

The true doubt, which keeps within its proper limits and on the road to its appointed goal of a constantly advancing but never perfect knowledge, deserves to be regarded as an ever active and co-operative power for the development of truth and science. It must therefore be confessed that the appointed guardians of the publicly acknowledged truth (which, as such, ought to possess universal authority, both in the state and the spiritual domain) do not always exhibit the greatest wisdom and discretion. Too often do they violently suppress every movement of doubt without distinction, and allow no opening to it in any shape. For by this course they do but exaggerate the spiritual and intellectual evil that already exists. At least this purely negative method can never totally eradicate it.

We have now, then, completely depicted, in their leading features at least, the principal errors to which science is exposed. And if we have enabled you to regard them as errors both in their origin and their subsequent character, we must at the same time, by means of the contrast, have thrown additional light and distinctness on the idea of science, not only as regards its different elements and constituents, but also the whole periphery and center of internal certainty. If, now, it should be required of us to give a common characteristic of all the fundamental errors which, potentially at least, exist in the human consciousness—if it be wished that we should comprise under one general designation the false phantom of absolute unity and necessity in science—the imaginary fiction of death brought into nature by a dead and atomistic mode of thinking—the prejudices of the Ego or Me, and the spirit of eternal negation, which is utterly fatal to truth—then, for this purpose, nothing else would remain but an empty formula or unsubstantial notion, viz., the dead absolute. At least this would be thoroughly appropriate to convey that intrinsic indifference of all forms of scientific untruth.

Opposed thereto, and forming the center of a true and valid knowledge, is that source of eternal love within the feeling to which we have already so often alluded, designating it by either similar or somewhat different expressions. To defend and securely to settle this living center of all higher truth and true science against the attacks of absolute skepticism, was even the task which we proposed to ourselves from the outset. It was however far from our intention, while discharging this duty, wholly to put doubt itself under a ban. On the contrary, we look upon the latter as an essential means of improvement, and as an almost indispensable organ of development in a living progression of knowledge.

Now in these definite limits, both for the exclusion of absolute skepticism and for the recognition and correct application at all times of a genuine and salutary doubt, we have, we think, found a satisfactory answer to the great question of truth and of the possibility of man’s attaining to a knowledge of it. And if so, we have at the same time shown completely that doubt forms a decisive crisis in the human mind, and thereby happily solved the problem which at an earlier period we propounded with regard to it. And moreover, as was then declared to be necessary, the instinctive feeling of truth within the very center of love has been raised to and established in the dignity of an intelligent feeling or a solid judgment of inward certainty, and of an immediate perception thereof. And this immediate perception of inward certainty must serve as the transition from the first developed notion of the consciousness to our now more enlightened idea of science, and also form the connecting link between them. Before, however, we can close our present development with this notion of judgment or intelligent feeling of inward certainty, one question remains to be answered, or perhaps one remark to be added. And this relates to truth itself, as the inmost center of such an immediate perception, while the question that occurs is, what is it, per se, to know, and what is it that in the act of knowing really takes place in the human mind?

Now it has been long admitted that true knowing consists in this: that a man discerns things, not merely as they outwardly appear, but as they are really and truly in themselves. But this true intrinsic essence of things is seized or understood by him only who perceives them such as they proceeded from the Deity, have their being in Him, and such as they stand before His omniscient eye and are seen by him. What, then, is true knowledge, if such be possible for man? Now, supposing the existence of a living God—and how, without this universal primary and imperishable hypothesis, could there be either talk or question about truth or knowledge in general?—this supposition then involves the idea of an omnipresent Deity, in whom all existing things “live and move, and have their being,” even though He does not visibly appear, and is hidden to the outward eye of sense. Truly to know, therefore, would be, if we may so express it, to feel and draw out the latent presence of God in objects, and thereby to seize and perceive their true intrinsic essence. Now, if it is necessary to distinguish the several grades of development of this spiritual or intellectual feeling which draws out the inner truth of things, its first step must be described as a perception, which, however, is both from without and remote. The second would be a sensation, i.e., the full certain finding the truth in one’s self.[75] As to the last step of consummation, that would amount to an intellectual intuition, even though, by reason of human finiteness, it must ever remain indirect. Still it would not, on that account, be less profoundly searching and penetrating, while, in it, that of which we have now first become certain comes forth externally perfect, and admits of being imparted to others. And unquestionably for that philosophy which pretends to open and unveil a true and right understanding of the inner and higher life, after the first grade, which took for its basis the full and complete notion of the consciousness; and after the second, in which the idea of science is unfolded, this intuition of truth forms the third degree, and also the final close and completion, of the whole. In order, however, to understand how such an intuitive knowledge is possible, we must bear in mind that it is not we who raise ourselves to the divine idea; but that, on the contrary, it is it that takes hold of our minds, being imparted to and working within us.

The deadly attacks of skepticism may, no doubt, be directed successfully enough against an unconditional science of reason, where its action or reaction, which brings out the intrinsic contradiction of such a system, is both salutary and desirable, in order to destroy the false semblance of a spurious necessity. All its blows, however, glance off from a real and solid experience, and soon cease entirely. And just so, also, the limit of an assumed or credited impossibility, which is too hastily and too nearly set up, is quickly overstepped by facts themselves. Very often, before now, has it happened, in experimental science, that what man once not merely questioned, but actually declared to be incredible, nay, even impossible, has unexpectedly proved, afterward, to be an actual fact, and gained general credence as undeniably certain. How much is there not in nature that deserves to be called marvelous, and borders close upon the miraculous, and which makes, at least, some such impression on our minds and understandings as they have been hitherto developed? To one, indeed, who takes his stand on revelation, it becomes extremely difficult to draw a strict line of demarkation, and to raise an impassable boundary between that which is called natural and that which is termed supernatural, in the usual sense of these words. And, if all higher truth is imparted, and can not but be such, who will presume to set a limit or a measure here? Who will set bounds to the Author of revelation which He shall not pass? If, then, even in philosophy, all science and truth is really a revelation, and if it were recognized and understood in this light, then should we be able to put this matter to the test of experience, provided, only, that we be careful to draw from the right source, and to treat philosophy really and truly as a science of an experience higher than any internal or external one.

But man must not expect, even according to this point of view, to penetrate at once into the fullness of the divine mysteries, and arbitrarily to play with and mold them at his pleasure. The development of truth in the human mind always proceeds slowly, and step by step. Even when the whole beginning and sure foundation is already found, or, rather, given, the inner evolution and external application of true science unfolds itself with extreme tardiness. At each point of progress much still remains to be overcome, much to be improved, and even to be thought upon once more, and reconsidered over and over again. Often, too, at the very last moment, an unexpected obstacle presents itself, or some new procrastination of a conscientious doubt or care. To show that all this is to be expected, even according to the theory which makes science to be a divine communication, and that all higher knowledge is and must be such, I have a remark or two more to add. And here I shall not follow the same course that I took in my exposition of the possible forms of error, tracing the origin of each to some predisposing cause in the several faculties of the mind. It will suffice to take for granted the keenest susceptibility in the truth-loving soul, the greatest activity and energy of the spirit in its search after and cognition of science, and a perfectly pure will co-existing and having a common foundation in a purified, newly-invigorated, and enhanced state of the human consciousness.